Earlier this week, President Obama pledged to aid American small businesses with loans and dramatic tax benefits. A big part of the plan is a tax incentive for business owners to hire new workers in the coming months. The details of the plan are available here

The president’s decision reflects the importance he puts on job creation and nursing the US economy back to health. It also demonstrates just how important small businesses are to the country as a whole. Businesses have an undeniable impact on the communities they’re part of, by providing services and creating employment opportunities. With the millions of American families feeling the effects of the recession this year, the president is looking to individual entrepreneurs and mom-and-pop-style small businesses to get us back on track.

But don’t take my word for it:

“Small businesses are the heart of the American economy. They're responsible for half of all private sector jobs –- and they create roughly 70 percent of all new jobs in the past decade. So small businesses are not only job generators, they're also at the heart of the American Dream. After all, these are businesses born in family meetings around kitchen tables. They're born when a worker takes a chance on her desire to be her own boss. They're born when a part-time inventor becomes a full-time entrepreneur, or when somebody sees a product that could be better or a service that could be smarter, and they think, ‘Well, why not me? Let me try it. Let me take my shot.’”